Geoffrey Palmer

Despite being a fully-fledged member of the Grumpies' fan club I bet narrator Geoffrey Palmer and his gang of grouchy celebs are the Christmas guests from hell.

Ronni Ancona will moan that your Jamie Oliver-inspired turkey and cranberry sauce is "basically chicken with jam", Al Murray will tell you to "go away" when you talk to him about the joy of giving (he actually uses stronger language but I'm starting my New Year's resolution a few days early) and Penny Smith will moan that it's all "sentimental claptrap". Donna McPhail will terrify your dog by declaring Christmas is "worse than a puppy because you can't put it in a sack and drown it." And Ozzy Osbourne will consider getting back on his quad bike to avoid the whole thing for a second time. It's "just b******s," he says. Oh damn, there goes my resolution already.

This joyous look back at John Cleese's benchmark sitcom delivers everything you could hope for. For the first time, Cleese, ex-wife Connie Booth, screen wife Prunella Scales and Andrew Sachs, together with producer-director John Howard Davies, re-call how the shows came about.

Cleese's anecdotes about the Torbay hotelier who inspired the monstrous Basil are as funny as the gold-plated clips. And that's saying something, since Fawlty Towers' slapstick violence has tremendous impact in short bursts.

Add interviews with many of the sitcom's guest stars, including Bernard Cribbins, Una Stubbs, Geoffrey Palmer and David Kelly and you have real depth and detail. If only the start of each section wasn't delayed by unnecessary come-ons, it would be the perfect documentary for the perfect sitcom.

What do you look for in a workmate? A talent for footie? A nice little bum? Or access to a never-ending supply of biscuits? Fortunately for Rod Millet, he's got all three, which makes him a shoo-in for the post of assistant curator at a bijou gallery known as The Maltby Collection. Unfortunately for Rod Millet, on the very day that he starts work, the powers-that-be decide the museum must close.

Rod's colleagues immediately set about finding themselves comfy billets elsewhere - but the new boy decides to fight for the institution's survival ...

David Nobbs's sitcom stars Julian Rhind-Tutt as the biscuity idealist, Rachel Atkins as his smouldering boss, and Geoffrey Palmer as the self-centred museum director.

The best thing about Fairly Secret Army was the trailer, a not uncommon state of affairs. In this Truscott (Geoffrey Palmer) listed his natural enemies, and the language turned into a cascading stream of consciousness, all spume and spary and the occasional lunatic salmon leaping joyously